Netherlands: 5% are Muslims

About 5% of the Dutch population are Muslims, according to new statistics from 2006 by the Dutch Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS). This is about 850,000 people.

The number is lower then previous estimates, since the CBS used a different way of working, which according to the bureau gives a better estimate.

According to the old estimates there were more than a million Muslims in 2006. In the past the CBS based its estimates on teh basis of external research and the portion of Muslims in the land of origin. Now they use data from the Permanent Survey of Life Situations. In this survey people are given the opportunity to say on their own which religious denomination they belong to.

This data shows that about half of non-Western immigrants follow Islam. Turks (about 325,000) and Moroccans (260,000) are the biggest groups of Muslims. Other big groups are Surinamese (34,000), Afghans (31,000) and Iraqis (27,000). There are 12,000 ethnic Dutch Muslims.

40% of the non-Western immigrants in the Netherlands would like to move. The reasons are the qualitatively worse residences in which immigrants usually live and the size of the family. The readiness to move among immigrants is much higher than by ethnic Dutch.

Since 2002 the total of house movings in the Netherlands has gone up, just like the number of people who want to move. The number of people who have built a house themselves or had one built, are gone up remarkably, according to the CBS.

Less than half of Amsterdam residents (44%) were born in the city. In the inner city, a third of the residents were born in Amsterdam.

According to the CBS, most of the native Amsterdam residents can be found in Oostzaan, Nieuwendam en Buiksloot. In Buiksloot 80% of the residents were born in the city.

Source: NU (Dutch)

See also: CBS 1, 2 (Dutch)